t-minus 49 days.....

ok so it's been a while since my last post!......every time i say i'm going to buckle down and post more, it fails miserably!......a friend of ours with two little girls (well they're like 9 and 7 now i think) told us she dubbed this time when her kids were this little "the blurry years".......i'm starting to see what she means!.......

so updates first i guess......baby #3's due date is now 49 days away.......some days that seems like no time at all - especially when i think it's the last 49 days of my life i'll ever be pregnant, but other days it literally seems like years away - i just can't imagine getting any bigger, let alone 7 weeks more bigger......it's funny how differently i'm carrying this one and they've all been girls......i'm almost 100% all baby this time - i envied women that looked like they swallowed a basketball but didn't look puffy or prego anywhere else on their body.......last two times i was a puffy hot mess........but this time i haven't gotten too puffy - only in the last week or so have i noticed some very slight leg/foot swelling, but hardly noticable at all......i have stopped envying those swallowed a basketball women - this much weight all in your belly is crazy.......lately i've also felt some cramping/tightening - which i'm not sure if they're those braxton hicks contractions or not - i didn't have any contractions with casey and molly until after my water broke and they induced me.......the monitor they had me hooked up to told me when i was having the first stage of contractions so i never really put much thought into them until they starting hurting like hell......so i'm not sure what to make of these.......wondering if it's a sign i'll be early - fingers crossed on that one!.......i know 33 weeks is a little early to deliver, but sometime in the next few weeks would be perfect with me!.......

ok onto molly updates (might as well go youngest to oldest this post!).......i feel like molly's been constantly sick this entire winter and spring.......we had our first bout with conjunctivitis a couple weeks ago.......molly started it with a pretty bad case of it, then casey got a very mild case and i also got a slight case as well.......as well as they like tylenol and pretty much any other medicine we've ever had to give them, putting that gel into their eyeballs 3x a day for 7 days was definitely not something either of them (or me!) liked........now that that's passed, we're back to a stomach bug along with a fever for molly.......after her follow up visit to the gastroentemologist during which we learned she actually went down one percentile in weight (8th to the 7th), she had 3 consecutive days of barely eating any solid food at all.......today's lunch of mac & cheese was her first real meal and i'm hoping it stays down......good news on that is that she's been drinking like usual, so although the pediatrician advised against dairy, she's been drinking milk and juice so she's still getting some calories.......it might be the saddest thing ever though when she pulls her shirt up and says "betty hurt" (she hasn't quite gotten around to pronoucing her L's) and you know there's no medicine or anything i can give her to make it better.......aside from the sicknesses though, molly's doing great.......she's really coming into her own personality - unluckily for us, she seems to have quite the imp-ish streak.......says "no" pretty regularly and will throw an all out tantrum even before she's hit 18 months old.......she seems to understand when we tell her not to do something, but goes right ahead and does it anyway.......she's constantly climbing onto chairs, then standing on the chair, then getting into anything she can reach from there (climbing onto tables, drinking sodas/coffees that happen to be on said table, playing with the phone, turning off the laptop, etc)......it's a bit maddening at times, but she's so damn cute doing it it's really hard to get mad about any of it.......can't wait till she can understand time-outs!.......she's still an awful napper - we're at 1-2 naps a day lasting anywhere from 20 min to an hour......two 1-hr naps in a day is pretty unheard of........most of the time it's more like one 1-hr nap or two 20-min naps.......she's so incredibly different from casey who was a religious two 2-hr a day napper (totalling 4 nap hours) and who aimed to please us so much that she hardly ever disobeyed once she understood something was "bad".......oh and molly is quite the daddy's girl.......

now for casey.......well since my last post, she turned 3 - which i guess means she's now past the "terrible 2s" and into the "even more terrible 3s" stage.......she didn't really have a "bad" 2s - she only threw 1 tantrum that i can remember, but she did learn "no" and how to let us know if something wasn't what she wanted......but 3 has proven to be a different animal - she's throwing tantrums multiple times a day over silly little things, demanding to do things herself even if she hasn't yet learned how to do them, and overall thinking that what she wants to do trumps what we want her to do........so it's been a bit of a struggle trying to get all these new behaviors under control.......i don't want her to turn into a bratty kid so i'm trying to nip as many in the bud as i can........i find it the most difficult when it seems that i've figured out a way to stop something like a tantrum, then steve or my parents or steve's parents try to intervene and do it either a different way or undermind my method - it gets worse.......so we all either need to get on the same page here or just try to ride the train out until the behaviors pass........she's such a good kid that i can't imagine they'll be around long.......she tries to help with everything and overall is a really happy energetic kid.......she says the most hysterical things - i really should write them all down, but alas, you know how that would go!.......having nothing to compare her to really, i'm not sure if she's super smart or not, but she seems it........she can tell you the first letter of pretty much any word you throw at her........she knows all the letter sounds and all that.......she can count up to about 50 or so........and she's working on writing her letters and identifying numbers (not quite as easy for her as the letters for some reason)......and she can pretty much memorize a book after 1-2 readings of it - and will readily correct you if you skip or mis-pronounce a word (which alternates between being something that i laugh at and get annoyed at!)......

anyhow, that's the kid update........steve is in atlantic city with the poker guys for the weekend......he'll be back tomorrow afternoon thank god - you don't realize how important even one hour of not-being-the-only-parent-time is until you don't have it for a few days......i'll definitely be happy when he's home.......not to say i didn't miss him in my own right, but i've missed sharing the parenting too!.......and at 33 weeks prego, i know i'm not the most patient or fun mom around.......

ok enough for one post!.......hopefully i'll be back before baby #3 comes to give more frequent updates from psychoville......

molly's words......

so it took her long enough to say something other than "mama" and "dada", but molly's finally starting to say all kinds of words now.......her favorite is "owl" - which i have to say she pronounces a lot better than you'd think a 15 month old should be able to......her other popular words are "duck" (well it comes out more like "uck" but it's close!), "oscar", "bird", "up", and "yeah"......she's so incredibly soft spoken and has this teeny cute little voice.......i can't wait for her to start chattering away like casey does.......although i could definitely wait on the whining and yelling that casey seems to be into lately!.......hooray for her finally talking though!.......

spring in february......

it's been so incredibly nice out this past week - today it's just about 60 degrees!.......of course it's starting to get a little cloudy and might rain, but still take that over the 20 degree days of recent weeks past......the 5ft piles of snow have dwindled to a mere 3ft and i can see patches of grass and mud in places......i didn't think we'd ever see the snow drifts go away - and they haven't yet, but i'm convinced by july they'll be gone!.......of course the next "wintry mix" storm is supposed to be monday and the temps for the next 10 days aren't supposed to get above the 30s, but i'm grateful for a week-long respite from the winter.......we can make it through the last few weeks of winter!.......come on spring!......

huge.....

i'm officially feeling HUGE......god i am not a "i love being pregnant" pregnant girl......and i still have 4 months to go!!......argh!.......

are you even kidding me???......

so we've just re-emerged from another week of being sick in our house........casey started us off about a week ago with a flu-like bug complete with fever and hacking cough/bronchitis, then it infected molly, then me, now back to casey........i seriously can't even believe we were all sick again.......of course, once again steve gets the bi on being sick - guess it's nice to know one of us has a functioning immune system!......healthy days please be on your way!!.....

beauty......

ok so raising 3 girls in today's society of "beauty is everything" has really been making me anxious lately.......i was fairly confident i could instill 1 daughter with a sound understanding that you need to take care of yourself and your body, yes, but that it's totally not everything.......that your brains, what's inside your heart, and how you treat others are equally, if not more, important things to cultivate.......but teaching 3 girls that and hoping they'll all end up as grown women with self-confidence, good healthy habits, smarts (both book and street), with a kind, good-hearted, humble disposition is more than i feel i can ask for.......there's so much around us that can lead to materialism, body image distortion, eating disorders, and superficiality that it seems nearly impossible that they'll all end up avoiding all that.......and by the time you realize something's wrong, the damage is done and it's really hard to repair!.......steve says there's just as much pressure in today's society for boys/young men, and i'm sure there's some, but i think it's a lot more with girls/young women......i just pray that steve and i will be able to help guide them to rise above all that and know what's really important.......

big girl naptimes ahead!......

today was casey's first day napping without a pull up.......i think she might've been ready for this move months ago since although it's kind of hard to tell, i think most days she wakes up with a dry pull up.......but i wasn't ready to risk her waking up early from her naps with a wet bum and bed before now.......now that molly's napping better (well better for her anyway - most days she does an hour in the morning and almost an hour & half in the afternoon) i'm a little more willing to take on the challenge of dealing with casey's naptime accidents if any should arise......today went flawlessly!.......

not quite ready to do it overnight though since most every morning she wakes up with some degree of wetness in her pull up......maybe when the new baby comes and i'm up 100 times during the night anyway we can try that one!......but for now i'm proud of this baby step my big girl's taking!......